Modern wellbore completions make use of various power consuming devices that are located downhole. Examples include various types of electrically operated valves as well as other flow control devices such as electrically operated flow control sleeves. There are a number of ‘power bottlenecks’ in the wellbore completions systems, causing a limitation to downhole actuation of electrically operated downhole flow control devices. Examples of such power bottlenecks include subsea trees, inductive couplers, optical connections, and fluid flow energy harvesting systems. A completion system that has strong actuators may be limited by the amount of continuous power available at the downhole location due to these power bottlenecks.
Current technologies of storing downhole energy have operational limitations in permanent applications (˜10 years) and elevated temperatures (>125° C.). This poses a challenge to the designers of completions systems that rely on power intensive actuation applications such as intelligent completions valves. Normally these systems require occasional actuation and hence minimal ‘average’ power over their lifetime; however, due to the limitation in downhole energy storage their power sources are designed for peak demand.